COMMODITIES: Dime Store Gold Rush

As one General Services Administration
official put it: "This wasn't any 5 and 10¢-store trade. These were
Tiffany items." On the block in what must have been one of the most
widely watched auctions ever held was a small chunk of the U.S.'s 276
million-oz. gold stockpile, offered for sale to the public in minimum
lots of 400 oz.worth $70,000 at pre-sale prices. But when the 209
bids submitted last week were opened, it looked like the great gold
sale had drawn a strictly Woolworth's crowd.

European Buyers. The Government threw out 56 bids, among them a number
of frivolous ones...